The present invention is directed to a system for transmitting one or more blocks of information signals from a satellite antenna to a remote receiver using wideband fiber optic links.
Conventional television-receive-only (TVRO) earth station systems consist of a TVRO antenna which receives one or more high frequency signals directly from a telecommunications satellite, low noise amplifiers (LNAs) which amplify the signals, and coaxial cables which transmit the amplified signals to headend equipment containing a receiver which extracts baseband video and audio signals from the high frequency satellite signals for transmission to subscribers.
Multiple TV channels are transmitted from a satellite in blocks of twelve frequency division multiplexed signals, typically over a 3.7-4.2 GHz band. Current satellites are capable of transmitting twenty-four TV channels in two blocks--a twelve channel, horizontally polarized block and a twelve channel vertically polarized block. Each block is separately received by the satellite antenna, amplified by a LNA and transmitted over coaxial cable to headend equipment comprising the receiver(s) and "on channel" modulators.
However, even when specially designed, high frequency/low loss coaxial cable is employed, the distance over which the channels can be transmitted without repeating is only about 300 feet. Beyond this distance, the quality of the signal degrades rapidly. This fact severely restricts the location of the head-end equipment with respect to the satellite antenna.